Mess Ups & Mistakes

“Mess Ups & Mistakes”

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Hebrews 4:16 NIV

We had a hilarious thing happen in our house the other day. It sent my daughter, Sarah and I into hysterical laughing.  My son, Bryce was sitting on the couch doing his school work.  All of a sudden his cell phone starts ringing. He proceeds to answer it. It was a local number, he never gets any phone calls so he assumed that it was a telemarketer.

Being the goofy & pranking kid he is, he answered the call by saying, “how dare you interrupt me when I'm doing school". I heard a male voice kinda confused on the other end.  Then, Bryce proceeds to hang up, quickly!

Me, being momma and being curious to who it might have been decided to Google the phone number. It was Pioneer Career and Technology Center. The school Bryce is enrolling into in the Fall. Oh My Goodness! Sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to do with that kid!!!!

The look on Bryce’s face was priceless. When he realized that it was not a telemarketer, but instead it was a man he was going to have to speak to daily for the next 2 years! He was mortified to say the least.  Then the number called back again. At that point Bryce was just frozen and didn’t answer the call.

Now he had some cleaning up to do. He was so embarrassed and He begged me to clean up this mess he created. He did not want to have to call this man back and talk to him.  I knew that there was a valuable life lesson here for him to learn. I can’t fix everything for Him, I can’t clean everything up for him when he makes messes. But I can be here to encourage him and give him advice on how to fix it.

So Bryce picked up his phone and called Pioneer, twice! The first time he called he spoke to the receptionist and she transferred Bryce to who she thought might have called him. But when the voice mail came on Bryce was too afraid to leave a message. So he hung up. Being the nice momma I am, I insisted that he call back. So reluctantly Bryce called back and went through the whole conversation again with the receptionist. He was transferred to the gentleman once again who called him and then finally Bryce left a message.

As parents sometimes we want to rush in and clean  up the mess for our kids. But sometimes, we need to sit back and let them figure it out. Does it mean that we ignore it? No! We stand by and root them on, encourage them, guide them and give them wisdom.

So what’s the life lesson? We will mess up. We are bound to make mistakes. We will do things that leave us embarrassed and frozen! We are human and that is our tendency. We will beg God to fix things for us!

God feels the same way that we feel as parents! He can fix everything for us. But sometimes God will not fix everything for us. Sometimes God wants us to learn the lesson in the middle of the mess. Like any loving parent, sometimes He wants us to learn from our mistakes.

We have to be willing to admit our goof ups and be willing to clean them up. We can’t be afraid to go to God! We can’t be afraid to talk to God about it! He already knows what we’ve done anyways! God is still there with us through it!

God will be with us as we clean up our mess ups. He will be there to encourage us. He will be there to guide us, advice us and to give us wisdom. We just have to listen. And we have to do it!

Music For You:

*Lord, I Need You by Chris Tomlin